On the ICAO Council decision in the case of Australia and the Netherlands v. the Russian Federation on the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17

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According to a press release from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), on May 12, the ICAO Council issued a decision on the issue of the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in 2014, which was submitted to it by Australia and the Netherlands back in March 2022.

The Council, of which Russia is not a member, allegedly concluded that the Russian Federation is responsible for the downed aircraft. However, there is no text of the decision itself, including its reasoning. That is, they voted “blindly” (what kind of decision can we even talk about then is a rhetorical question). Once again, it has been confirmed that the ICAO Council is a purely political body that makes decisions based on opportunistic motives, although it should not be.

Russia stopped participating in the said proceedings last year, on June 17, 2024, since it was impossible to talk about an impartial establishment of facts in the face of numerous procedural violations by the ICAO Council and Secretariat. At the same time, Moscow’s principled position remains relevant – Russia was not involved in the crash of flight MH17, and all claims to the contrary from Australia and the Netherlands are untrue.

Prior to this, Russia presented extensive and convincing factual and legal evidence to the Council of its non-involvement in the disaster and brought this evidence to the attention of all Council member states.

The Russian side has repeatedly proposed to the Council to conduct a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the downing of flight MH17, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 2166 (2014). However, the Council, for political reasons and in violation of procedure, refused to conduct such an investigation and instead accepted the claims of Australia and the Netherlands and the results of the work of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) on faith; and it includes the same Australia, the Netherlands, and Ukraine. That is, countries directly interested in defamation of Russia.

They ignored the fact that all the conclusions of the investigation organized by the Dutch are based on the testimony of anonymous witnesses whose identities are classified, as well as on information of dubious origin and materials transferred from an interested party – the Security Service of Ukraine.

The claims of the Netherlands and Australia about the use of satellite images as evidence are a lie, since they never had any images at their disposal. There are only unfounded claims that the US has some satellite data indicating that flight MH17 was “shot down by a surface-to-air missile”. However, the US categorically refused to provide access to it.

The Council completely ignored the presence of Ukrainian Buk air defense systems in the crash area and the markings on the missile debris indicating its Ukrainian origin. Ukraine has already shot down a civilian airliner before – in 2001, its air defense forces shot down a Russian Tu-154M over the Black Sea.

In addition, the Council, controlled by the countries of the “collective West” and their satellites, also ignored the decision of the International Court of Justice of the United Nations of January 31, 2024 in the case of “Ukraine v. Russia”, according to which Kyiv’s claims to hold Russia responsible for the downing of flight MH17 were rejected.

The ICAO Council is not independent. It consists of 36 ICAO member states (193 in total), voting on instructions from their capitals. The majority represent Western countries and their immediate satellites. Then there is simple arithmetic. None of them considered the issue professionally and on the merits.

The practice of using the ICAO Council against countries that are objectionable to the “collective West” is not new. This has not surprised anyone for a long time. It is enough to recall the case of the investigation into the landing of a Ryanair plane at the Minsk airport on May 23, 2021. Then, interested Westerners, who were not satisfied with the preliminary report of the Investigation Group, using their majority in the Council, forced the Group to “rewrite” the report and issue the anti-Belarusian result they needed. The recent decision of the ICAO Council on the competence to consider the case of “Great Britain, Sweden, Ukraine, Canada v. Iran” on the crash of a Boeing near Tehran was completely adjusted after a vote “behind the scenes”. A recent example can be given of the Council’s refusal to consider Venezuela’s claims in the context of a dispute against Argentina over unilateral restrictive measures in the sphere of civil aviation.

The Russian side, of course, continues to express its deepest sympathy to the relatives of the victims of the MH17 disaster. However, it is necessary to clearly understand that the main culprit of the tragedy is the Kiev regime. It was Kyiv that unleashed the armed conflict in 2014, launching a military operation against Donbass under the false pretext of fighting terrorism. The falsity of this pretext was subsequently confirmed by the International Court of Justice, which indicated that the DPR and LPR were not terrorist organizations. It was Kyiv that carried out the brutal bombing of Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities in the Donbass, killing civilians, including women and children.

It was Kyiv that refused to completely close the airspace over the combat zone, using civilian passenger planes – such as MH17 – to cover its bombers.

Russia will not recognize the Council’s decision; it is illegitimate, contrary to the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation and its own rules of procedure. Unlike the biased majority in the Council, Russia remains committed to UN Security Council Resolution 2166 (2014) and the cause of establishing the true causes of the air crash.